NYFF 2020 Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Lush foliage paves the frames of Mexican director Yulene Olaizola’s entrancing feature “Tragic Jungle.” Backdrop to violence and the supernatural, the eponymous ecosystem traps us in its mystifying maw for an alluring adventure centered on Black and Indigenous characters—an infrequent sight in the country’s filmic output.

Among the many things suspended during these plague times of social distancing and self-quarantine is the friendly visit, those excursions we take to friends’ houses just to hang out and catch up, exchange banalities and intimacies between sips of wine on the couch.

They “meet cute” from across a street, at opposing bus stops; Luc (Logann Antuofermo) is going one way, Djemila (Oulaya Amamra) the other. We meet them in evenly composed medium-wide shots, the camera sharing the distance that separates them.

A teaser is meant to, well, tease. Though that definition has changed over the years, as modern teasers have been known to be bonafide trailers that spoil major plot points and leave little to the imagination.

Philippe Lacôte understands the cyclical nature of human conflict and how invaluable the stories people tell about their collective past are. In the remarkable “Night Of The Kings,” the Ivorian director’s follow-up to the political turmoil drama “Run,” oral tradition enlivens a chaotic microcosm that’s suspended somewhere between an ancient saga and contemporary unrest.

Nothing “happens” in the opening scene of Tsai Ming-liang’s “Days,” at least not in any conventional sense: Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a middle-class, middle-aged man, is sitting at his window, looking out at as the rain falls. The shot lasts four-and-a-half minutes, without cutting or moving – just a man, staring out a window and thinking.

With the indispensable aid of his widow and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento, the prolific Raúl Ruiz has given the world another film from beyond the grave. That might seem strange for some directors, but this partnering of living and dead is right on brand for the esoteric exile, whose films always operated in liminal spaces, obscuring the difference between dream and reality, night and day, conscious and unconscious.

If a film such as “The Irishman” or “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is unnecessarily long, then what will people say about “Malmkrog,” Cristi Puiu’s three-and-a-half-hour period adaptation? Focused almost entirely on the intellectual discussions of five aristocrats gathered at a wintry Transylvanian mansion in the early 1900s, “Malmkrog” belongs to the milieu of cerebral art-films whose arduousness is perhaps exactly the point.

It feels like we spend less time in awe at movies these days, cocking our collective head and murmuring or gasping, “How did they do that?” That lack of marveling is partly due to Marvel, at risk of putting too fine a point on it – not to single them out, but there’s a general sense, in film culture, that we know how everything is done, thanks to behind-the-scenes packages and DVD supplements and copious images of actors in front of green screens.

Like most aspects of life, the New York Film Festival looks a little different this year, switching to a mostly virtual format in light of the pandemic.

Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen’s films rarely have a light touch. For example, “Hunger” recounts the life of IRA member Bobby Sands, and the group’s organized hunger strike; “Shame” depicts sex addiction; “12 Years a Slave” violently retells the story of a freed Black man kidnapped into slavery; and “Widows” explains the socio-political environment for women and Black people in Chicago.

Yep, festival season is a little weird this year, but if the currently-ongoing Venice Film Festival and just-started Toronto International Film Festival are any indication, the 58th New York Film Festival is going to be just as good, albeit enjoyed from a safe distance.

In light of the slew of canceled film festivals in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s New York Film Festival is hoping to pull out all the stops and become the premier film event in the US. And as a way of showing what that means, the NYFF organizers announced the Spotlight section for this year’s fest.

With the only major US film festival to happen in 2020 being Sundance, it’s not hyperbolic to say that the New York Film Festival is poised to be one of the biggest events in American film this year. It’s kinda that way by default.

While the US festival season has been in a bit of disarray since SXSW was canceled back in March, it appears that some events will actually take place before the end of 2020, led by the New York Film Festival in September.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the 2020 film festival schedule in shambles. Basically every festival from March until now has been either canceled or drastically altered with digital screenings.